LeslieBoyerMD

A father-daughter physician team considers our differences

My dad is retired now; but John T. Boyer, MD was a practicing and very well regarded geriatrician when I first showed him the analysis in my previous “Men, Women and Snakes” posts. In the “Age and Sex of Snakebitten People” graph, the greatest difference between the sexes happened between 15 and 44 years of age; and after age 60 both sexes . . .

Who gets bitten on the hand or on the foot?

Do rattlesnake bites affect men and women the same way?

In a previous article, I described a study of rattlesnake bites in Arizona, which showed some differences between men and women. Men were bitten more often than women, and at a younger age. Today, I’ll break down the same study’s data by month of the year, to illustrate a . . .

Is it true that most rattlesnake bites involve young men?

Is it true that most of the time, rattlesnake bites involve young men?

To learn the answer, at least for my home state of Arizona, colleagues and I sampled three years’ worth of records from the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, by pulling out the record of every third case of rattlesnake bite. That process resulted in . . .

Medical words in the public domain

What is the proper word for the antidote for snakebite or scorpion sting, made from the blood of animals that have been immunized with venom? Toxicologists and reptile enthusiasts correct each other all the time, on social media. But is one term really more proper than the other?

Part 2: The Venom Interviewees

On August 9, 2010, my assistant received an email message that began, “I am producing a documentary film about people who work professionally with venomous reptiles.” The message went on to describe an ambitious program of interviews from California to Canada, coast to coast, scheduled to continue through that November. The film would be “ . . .

Part 1: what it is like to be the “expert” quoted by reporters

I started this blog partly so that I can explain my specialty (treatment of injuries caused by snakes, spiders and scorpions) to people who encounter these fascinating creatures in their work, their hobbies, or their travels. But before continuing I want to make a few comments about the things you may see in the general media, where experts . . .

Years after a snakebite, it still puffs up and hurts sometimes. Why?

Occasionally a person who has been snakebitten on the foot will recover in every way but one: months, or even years, after the injury, the leg will tend to swell up again – sometimes at very inconvenient moments. It doesn’t get red, there’s no sign of infection, but it’s all puffy and maybe it even throbs with pain. What’s with all that?